Date of Birth: 
About Heinrich Vollmer
- Heinrich Vollmer (1885–1961) was a German small-arms designer. Vollmer began his manufacturing career by making parts for the German copies of the Maxim gun during the First World War.
- His first innovation was a beltless feed for the MG08/15.
- It was followed by a somewhat similar device for the MP/18/I submachine gun—this consisted of a 60-round circular, spool magazine that was carried by the soldier on loop on his hip and it was connected to the gun by a flexible hose.
- (The latter can be seen at the Wehrtechnische Studiensammlung Koblenz (WTS) as item #50008).In the early 1920s, Vollmer started to develop his own sub-machineguns.
- His early models, named VPG, VPGa, VPF and VMP1925 were fairly similar to the MP18.
- The VMP1925 had a wooden handgrip and was fed by a small 25-round drum magazine, connected directly to the gun.
- The VMP1925 was secretly tested by the Reichswehr, along with competing designs from Schmeisser and Rheinmetall.
- (The Reichswehr was prohibited by the Versailles Treaty from having sub-machine guns in service, although the German police was allowed to carry a small number.) Secret funding was given to Vollmer to continue development, and this resulted in the VMP1926, which mostly differed from its predecessor by the removal of the cooling jacket.
- A subsequent development was the VMP1928, which introduced a 32-round box magazine sticking from the left side.
- The final development of this series was the VMP1930.
- (It can also be seen at the WTS.) This model introduced a substantive innovation—a telescoping main spring assembly, which made the gun more reliable and easier to assemble and disassemble in the field.
- Vollmer applied for a patent for his innovation in 1930 and it was granted in 1933 as DRP# 580620.
- His company, Vollmer Werke, produced however only about 400 of these, and most were sold to Bulgaria.
- In late 1930, the Reichswehr stopped supporting Vollmer financially; consequently he sold the rights to all his designs to the company known as Erfurter Maschinenfabrik (ERMA), which continued development as the EMP.Vollmer also designed some machine guns.
- His initial work on this area may have begun as early as 1916.
- In 1927 he designed the VMG 1927 and developed it later in collaboration with Mauser into MV 31 (Mauser-Vollmer 1931).
- This gun however was not adopted for service.
- Instead the MG 34 general-purpose machine gun (GPMG), also developed by Vollmer, but on the basis of the Soloturhn S2-100 (MG 30) would eventually equip the German military in large numbers. Between 1935 and 1938 Vollmer also worked on a series of prototype assault rifles, known as the Vollmer M35, which were chambered in an intermediate cartridge co-developed with Gustav Genschow & Company (GECO).
Read more at Wikipedia